Read Online Playland by John Gregory Dunne - Free Book Online Page A

as well as the health care prescription programs, PCS and RECAP, and underneath the decals two signs, one that said THIS STORE UNDER THE PROTECTION OF JESUS CHRIST , and right below another that said CONDOMS AVAILABLE AT CHECKOUT COUNTER . Which was where she was headed, even as I was wondering if Jesus Christ had staked out a position on safe sex. “Lubricated or unlubricated?”she said, and I realized she was talking to me, my choice, and all I could do was give a ponderously rakish nod as the black woman behind the cash register impassively monitored my response, the black woman wearing dreadlocks that reminded me, a sharp unexpected pain, of the late Shaamel Boudreau, and then I followed up the nod with a silly little
comme ci, comme ça
smile, even in this liberated age the first time a woman had ever asked me a question like that, why not ask if I want extra ribbing, too, although I suppose that’s her call, not mine.

    Now she got back into bed. For a moment I panicked. I was not all that sure about Fern. Maybe it was Fawn. Shit, maybe even Caroline or Beth.
    “Fern was crying.”
    There. That was it. Fern was the daughter, the Mensa child with an IQ of 179, with a bullet. Terence was Fern’s baby brother. Fern and Terence. Fern wouldn’t go to bed, the babysitter had said. A pain in the ass is what the babysitter, with all her heavy sighs, had meant about Fern. The babysitter was seventeen, overweight, a blimp with zits like BBs (except kids don’t have BB guns anymore, they buy the real thing, a semiautomatic with extra clips), three Milky Way wrappers and an empty bag of nacho-flavored corn chips on the coffee table, and she looked me up and down, a knowing goddamn look, like she was wondering if I could still get it up, figuring that was what I was there for. Fern’s mother said she would clean up, would I give the sitter a ride home in the Cressida. The sitter sat close, hip to hip, as if she was my date, and when I stopped in front of her apartment complex she just waited there, and finally she said, You can feel me up if you want. Going to the slam for criminal trespass of a minor was not on my agenda, thank you very much. I kept my hands firmly on the steering wheel until she flounced out of the car. She fucks everybody, you know, the babysitter said. Her parting shot. Jesus God, what a day, what a night, how do I get out of this? No way. I had to bring thefucking Cressida back. And now, please, what in the name of Christ is the name of this woman lying next to me who had the genes to produce a Mensa child and whose fat babysitter says she fucks everybody. Maybe that’s how she learned to do it so great. With all that experience.
    I had an erection. If we began to get it on again maybe I could remember her name. A hard-on to jog the memory. A new physiological concept. Something for the medical journals. The Broderick Effect. Try the Beth area. Liz. Betsy.
    Lily.
    A sigh of relief. Lily. Lily what. Lily White. That was it. Lily White.
    Her fingers moved down my stomach. Like a centipede. She touched me. Then she licked my cock, and quickly put it in her mouth, as if to see if it was a good fit. “Thumping and beating and hard as a rock,” she said when she just as quickly removed it, every syllable equally stressed. “We used to say that in the girl’s locker room at Mount St. Mary’s. None of us knew what it meant.”
    She had learned.
    “Lily. Jesus. Lily. Jesus. Jesus. Mama.” Wait a minute. I didn’t say Mama.
    “Mama.”
    Oh, shit. Fern. Lily scrambled up as I tried to pull the sheet over me. The sheet stuck up in the air.
    “Why is the man making so much noise?”
    “It’s all right, Fern.” She was surreptitiously removing a hair from her tongue. Things to dislike about sex. God. We had talked about that earlier, after the first time. What do you dislike most about sex, she had said, after I had fucked her backside front, her choice, her tits hanging down like triangular bugger